


Time After Time

by rijane



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-01
Updated: 2017-01-11
Packaged: 2018-09-03 12:34:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8714131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rijane/pseuds/rijane
Summary: “Hey punk,” Bucky held out a coat first. Clothes were in his bag, but the list only said where and when, not which Steve would travel. This one was young, young as he ever was since they started the list.
“Buck?” the flash of fear on his face made Bucky wince. 
“Yeah, it’s me. You’re in DC. 2016. Put some pants on,” Bucky threw some clothes at Steve, hopefully the right size.
“2016?”
“Yeah, we got crazy robot slaves, flying cars, everything.”





	1. Chapter 1

The bus rumbled by, noisy and made noisier by the chatter of guys heading home. Bucky took a long puff of his cigarette before rubbing it out on the brick. Steve’d be pissed if he saw – he couldn’t take the smoke and was sure it’d kill Bucky, too. ‘Course he’ll smell it. Bucky never smoked back when they were back in Brooklyn. For starters, the asthma would start kicking Steve’s ass worse than the O’Loughlin twins. 

Then he heard it. The pop of air rushing out of space, gasps, and the smack of bare skin on pavement. Then Steve was there. Naked and skinny like no one fed him, like Bucky remembered, and shivering. 

“Hey punk,” Bucky held out a coat first. Clothes were in his bag, but the list only said where and when, not which Steve would travel. This one was young, young as he ever was since they started the list.

“Buck?” the flash of fear on his face made Bucky wince. 

“Yeah, it’s me. You’re in DC. 2016. Put some pants on,” Bucky threw some clothes at Steve, hopefully the right size.

“2016?”

“Yeah, we got crazy robot slaves, flying cars, everything.”

“Flying cars?”

Bucky snorted and tossed Steve a shirt, too. “Nah, but you can own a plane now, better than a flying car. I mean, not everyone. But people. Tony.”

“Who the hell is Tony?” Steve was buttoning up and looking at Bucky a little less afraid. 

“You meet him later. Don’t worry about it. Asshole of the highest order, but means well.”

Steve shrugged, used to vague information about his own future. “Thanks for the clothes. What’s with the get up?”

Bucky shrugged. Hard to explain the leather, the Kevlar, the Glock strapped to his leg and the knife concealed next to that. Arm was even harder, but with long sleeves and gloves, Steve hadn’t it yet. “Ain’t 1942 any more.”

“It never is,” he paused, looked up under that fall of unkempt blonde hair. “Buck… this is my first jump since I told you.”

“Shit, really? When you coming from?” Bucky took a breath. It was before everything then. Before the war, before he enlisted, before… before Steve’s ma died even. 

“1939. I was sleeping, but last night you made me sneak into a Dodgers game.”

“I made you?” Bucky barked out a rusty laugh. “Don’t matter what year it is. You’re the same little shit you always were. If it’s the game I’m thinking of, you’re the one who found the trash door at Ebbets and pulled my ass through it.”

Steve smiled big. “But it was your idea to look.”

“Sure, sure. My idea. Captain America can do no wrong, no swearing, no cheating, not ever.”

Steve gave a confused look. “Captain who?”  
“Never mind. It’ll be funny later,” Bucky waved a gloved hand. “Time travel ruins all my jokes.”

“It’s possible, Buck, that you just ain’t funny.”

“Shut up or I’ll take the pants back.” Bucky hit Steve lightly on the shoulder and led him to the bike and home.

It wasn’t until they hit the parkway that Steve tensed up behind him. 

“You jumping again?” Bucky shouted over the engine.

“Buck, why aren’t you old? Fuck, am I contagious?” Steve shouted into his ear. “Bucky, did I do something to you?”

Bucky shook his head, but didn’t answer. This Steve didn’t look at him sideways yet and he liked it that way. He liked slipping the bad years into a dark corner of his mind, leaving them there as long as he could. “I’ll pull over.”

A mile later, he roared into the parking lot at Gravelly Point – around the cluster of dark vehicles, the small crowds of people watching planes come in overhead, and past the port-o-pots reeking of piss and shit and a hint of pot. He pulled in at he Steve scrambled off the moment the kickstand went down and squinted in the evening dusk at Bucky. 

“You lying to me? You sure as shit don’t look a hundred years old. You start jumping? God, please tell me I didn’t give you – when we, you know,” Steve looked on the verge of a panic attack and the terrifying wheeze of his lungs send a shiver through Bucky. 

“Nothing like that. I got here the long way round,” Bucky gave a deep sigh. 

“You lived 100 years to look like that? We find the fountain of youth in the Hudson? What happened?” 

Bucky started to roll up his sleeve. Steve gasped when his metal arm caught the light. 

“You’re a robot?” Steve reached out almost involuntarily, but pulled back. 

“You can touch,” his sensors picked up the light touch of Steve’s fingers, then the squeeze of his hand on his metallic forearm. He flexed, sending the pieces whirring and then letting go quickly. “There was an accident and I got hurt. Bad. Lost the arm, got to keep this pretty face and welcome you to the future. Miracles of modern science.”

“Shit. A robot and a time traveler. Hell of a pair,” Steve rubbed his eyes, staring at the arm still. Bucky resisted the urge to touch Steve, with flesh and blood and metal and hold him close. Wrong Steve, wrong time. Wrong Bucky. 

“Let’s go,” he led Steve back to the bike. “I’m not far, crashing in a place off Benning, near the Armory.”  
Bucky felt Steve craning around behind him, so he took the scenic route – the Jefferson Memorial, the Smithsonians, the Capitol, the shitty new street cars by H. They rolled up to his place. Small, clean, nothing to separate it from the row houses on either side except the fresh coat of white paint on the porch. Fucking Steve and Sam. That was the kind of shit that might make the owner interested in this place again. 

They stashed the bike in back. Bucky resisted the urge to pick Steve up and carry him into the house. Traveling knocked the hell out of him every time.

“Ham and cheese?”

It was rhythm they knew, comforting to Steve and part of the Bucky he’d left behind.

“Of course.”

Steve buttered bread, Bucky piled it all together. He had cans of soup in the cupboard. He settled on vegetable, poured and stirred.

“How long do I have?” Steve asked.

Bucky shook his head. “You only told me when and where.”

"Okay then." Their hands ghosted each other. Bread, ham, cheese, flip.

“Yeah. Beans?”

Bucky opened the can at Steve’s nod. The soup was about ready when Bucky’s phone rang. It was Steve. Steve of now. Steve of silences and desperate hope and places where Bucky wasn’t. But, as always, Bucky answered.


	2. Chapter 2

“Yeah?”

“You okay? Sensors says there’s a disturbance in the...force?” a muffled voice spoke, “Tony, what the hell...”

“It’s a jump.” 

“Fuck.”

The younger Steve stirred the beans as the room filled with the smell of grease and brown sugar. 

“Buck, we’re heading out tomorrow. Hasakah. Don’t… He doesn’t know know, right?”

“’Course not.”

Steve let the silence hang. He remembered. Knew exactly what Bucky would, had told him. Steve didn't jump now. One of the things Erskine fixed, along with everything Bucky once loved. Steve maybe missed it, the chance to see the futures and change the inevitable. They didn't talk about that any more than they talked about the rest. About the blood, the bodies, the memories that grabbed him by the throat. The jigsaw order of their past, their present, their future. The desperate choked back grunts and groans, on a mountainside, pine needles digging into his skin and worrying that Dum Dum would come around the corner. In a cold room in Brooklyn. Against brick walls on Decatur. On cold metal wherever the fuck they pleased. 

“Okay. Call when I'm – he's... just, call.” 

“Roger that.”

And with that Bucky turned back to beans and soup and Steve, tiny and only faintly wheezing. He put a pot of water on the back burner, got a boil and filling the dry room with steam fast as he could. 

Together they put away two cans of soup, the beans, and half a loaf's worth of sandwiches. Bucky's stories would only ruin the past, so he asked Steve questions. About the last jump – middle of a cornfield, not long enough to know when it was, but there was a goat and a laugh. Bucky told him about the time he stole a Alfa Romeo in Warsaw, leaving out the CIA asset he'd knocked out and stashed in the trunk, but making sure to mention the East German agent, with her blonde hair, blue eyes, and legs that went on forever. He'd passed the package and thought at the time that he wanted to fuck her, so he did. That part he left out. 

Steve's eyes were closing longer and longer. Something tugged in him at the sight – that skinny face, the circles, the strain. And, god, so young. Proof that the memories were real. That he'd been real once. 

“Come on, Stevie,” Bucky squeezed Steve's shoulder and helped him into the other room. The way Steve leaned into him nearly made Bucky scoop him up and carry him, light as a feather, to the bed. The cut of bone made Bucky want to hold him even closer, press the warm of his body into Steve’s. Instead, he pulled back the sheets and the quilt from the secondhand place around the corner. The bright mishmash of colors that reminded him of a pleasant past with just a tinge of longing.

“Come here.”

Steve was warm at last, under Bucky and a pile of quilts. 

“Stevie… there's a girl,” Bucky whispered pain into the dark. “Her name is Peggy and you have to tell her.”

Regret and rage and hope bubbled inside of him. “She'll come when I can't. I'll try. I'll always try and so will she.”

And then they slept. They slept until it was morning. Until Steve was gone gone gone and only Bucky remained.


End file.
